concentration camp

noun

: a place where large numbers of people (such as prisoners of war, political prisoners, refugees, or the members of an ethnic or religious minority) are detained or confined under armed guard

—used especially in reference to camps created by the Nazis in World War II for the internment and persecution of Jews and other prisoners

The Nazi soldiers hauled [Mordechai] Strigler off to a concentration camp, and carved swastikas into his cheeks and forehead with a razor blade. Over the next five years, he was sent from one concentration camp or slave-labor camp to another.

—David Remnick

She ended up dying in a concentration camp, just a few months before she would have been liberated.

—Marilyn Reynolds

The V2 killed thousands of British civilians while 20,000 concentration camp inmates died as slave labourers during its manufacture in the closing stages of the second world war.

—Anna Tomforde et al.

see also death camp

Examples of concentration camp in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

These camps remind many Americans of the Nazi concentration camps in Germany during World War II. —Tom Zirpoli, Baltimore Sun, 22 Apr. 2025

My wife, who was born in Hamburg, remembers being taken to the former Neuengamme concentration camp with her school as a teenager. —Sebastian Stafford-Bloor, New York Times, 28 Mar. 2025

He was driven to a nearby concentration camp and held overnight. —John Blake, CNN Money, 13 Apr. 2025

Photo: Courtesy of Hannah Jackson Eighty years ago today, on April 11, 1945, Morris was liberated from the Buchenwald concentration camp in Weimar, Germany. —Hannah Jackson, Vogue, 11 Apr. 2025

Word History

First Known Use

1901, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for concentration camp

• amp
• champ
• clamp
• cramp
• damp
• gamp
• lamp
• ramp
• samp
• scamp
• stamp
• tamp

Kids Definition

concentration camp

noun

: a camp where persons (as prisoners of war, political prisoners, or refugees) are detained